Expensive but delicious rums from the island of Martinique are making their way stateside. This can mean only one thing: Rum is in.

For two generations, people have been looking for the most neutral tipple they can find. The answer was simple: vodka. With the resurgence of the cocktail, smoothness is not enough. They want flavor, too. A sign of this shift can be seen in the flood of new rums to the market and, in particular, the sudden appearance (in high-end bars and liquor stores, anyway) of numerous examples from the French Caribbean island of Martinique -- brands such as Clément, Neisson, J.M., La Favorite, Saint James. Unlike most rums, Martinique's rhum agricole -- "agricultural rum" -- is made not from the sticky, black, and sometimes sulfurous by-product of sugar refining we know as molasses but from fresh-pressed sugarcane juice. Pricier, yes, but the raw cane juice makes for a distillate that's the tequila of the rum world: bold, fresh, and spicy, with all kinds of vegetal notes from the cane stalks. When young, it's a great mixer; when old, it sips like a fine Armagnac. However old it is, it's about as unlike vodka as a spirit can be. Thus the old order passeth.

This story is part of our second annual register of emerging ideas, trends, discoveries, products, people, and obscene gestures you should know about before everyone else does.